


various storms and saints

by lostlenore



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-08
Updated: 2017-10-08
Packaged: 2019-01-10 04:33:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12291348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lostlenore/pseuds/lostlenore
Summary: Kyoutani has never been devout, but really, what's the point in living next to a shrine that he nearly defaced with his motorcycle if the gods can't even open the ground beneath him and drag him to hell.





	various storms and saints

**Author's Note:**

> Originally a chatfic for Kate, who couldn't sleep. I've cleaned it up a little, but kept the conversational tone of it as a style experiment, ymmv.

Once upon a time there was very grumpy vet tech with a heart like a marshmallow, who lived alone in a busted down apartment next to a shrine.

And by 'next to' a shrine, I mean basically on top of it. He could see into the grounds from his veranda. It was mostly nice, except at Obon, when the bells sounded like they were inside his goddamn room, and that the priest/caretaker/whatever the fuck his job was besides yelling at Kyoutani for nearly running over a statue with his motorbike, was an asshole that Kyoutani regularly wanted to punch in the face.

(A very good looking asshole though, let it be said. Kyoutani maybe thought about punching him less with his fists, and more with his mouth)

It wasn't that the priest was cruel, or that he neglected the shrine, or even that Kyoutani thought he was a bad person. It was the fact that the priest could gently, sweetly, talk to a hundred people in a day, with a smile that thawed even the hardest heart, and when he turned to Kyoutani suddenly Kyoutani was 15 again, bleaching his hair in a train station bathroom, smoking under the bridge by the river, and generally making an ass out of himself

He would pick a fight. The priest would snap back. And on and on it went, until Kyoutani had been living there a year and a half, fighting with a  _ priest _ of all people by day, and stealing out into the veranda to smoke and watch him fish leaves out of the koi pond by night. (With the sleeves of his vestments rolled up, he had surprisingly nice forearms.) It wasn't a compromise Kyoutani was happy with, exactly, but it was one he was prepared to live with. 

And then it was storm season, and things took a turn for the unexpected.

+++

Kyoutani comes home after his shift at the emergency clinic one afternoon in August unsure if it's morning or night. The sky is the same angry grey that it was when he woke up that morning. The winds are just as strong. There's a heaviness to the air that means it's rained recently, though that doesn't help at all. It's rained every day for the past week, and if it's not raining now, there will probably be more rain shortly. He kicks his shoes off into the void of his apartment, strips down to his undershirt, and throws everything in the laundry bin to deal with later. Then he goes to have a smoke on the veranda and see what the priest is up to, because it's been a hard day/night/week/year and Kyoutani's fucking earned every nice moment he can manage to claw from it for himself. The priest has a tiny rain hat on today (so adorable it should be fucking illegal) and has waded into the pond (less adorable, it's like he wants to catch a cold) to fish out some poor bastard's laundry pole that had come flying loose during the storm.

_ That poor fuck _ , Kyoutani thinks, taking a smug drag of his cigarette. Then the priest fishes out a hauntingly familiar pair of briefs featuring penguins in rodeo hats, and Kyoutani feels his soul physically leave his body.

Kyoutani has never run so fast in his entire life, and he's been chased by pipe-wielding thugs. The priest is holding the underwear out, pinched between finger and thumb, with an expression of barely suppressed laughter. His eyes widen when Kyoutani crosses the grounds in five angry steps and snatches them from his hands.

"NOT A WORD," Kyoutani shouts, absolutely burning with embarrassment. The only thing he'd even want to hear out of the priest's mouth right now are last rites. His request is predictably ignored. 

"They're yours?" Because fate is a heinous bitch, this is what finally turns the priest’s delighted smile Kyoutani's way. What a smile, though. It makes the corners of the priest's eyes crinkle into little half-moons.  "They're so cute!" 

Kyoutani has never been devout, but really, what's the point in living next to a shrine that he nearly defaced with his motorcycle if the gods can't even open the ground beneath him and drag him to hell. 

"Fuck OFF," Kyoutani shouts, over the sound of the priest's astonished laughter, and scuttles back to his apartment as fast as he can with an entire laundry pole in tow. He has to re-wash all his clothes, and he has another shift in less than twelve hours, but all he does is make sure to close the curtains tight, flop down on his futon, and scream into his pillow until he's too physically exhausted to be embarrassed. 

With the curtains closed, he misses the way the priest lingers in his needless pruning of the shrine's trees, pausing every few minutes to gaze hopefully up at his balcony, waiting for smoke break that never comes.

+++

Kyoutani being Kyoutani, he really  _ does _ mean to write himself a note to stop by the store for some rope. He'd rather stab himself with one of the horse tranquilizers again and let Irihita film him than go through the physical, spiritual, and grammatical pain that is the priest holding out his underwear and giggling. Unfortunately for him, he promptly forgets because he gets called into help Irihita with a sick python and there was no way that was going to end well for anyone involved. 

"You look tired," the priest says, when Kyoutani can only offer up a handful of expletives in exchange for the pair of briefs with the dancing frogs. Kyoutani isn't sure if they're better or worse than the penguins. His grasp on reality has gone strangely python-shaped. "Are you coming down with something?" 

"I'm not going to infect you with my cooties," Kyoutani says, making a grab for the second pair of underwear currently being mouthed at by a horde of overfed koi. "Don't worry about it." 

"I wasn't," the priest gives an irritated huff, and snags the underwear before Kyoutani can grab it, effectively holding him hostage to whatever awful, caring thing is about to come out of his mouth. "There's a storm warning for this weekend," he says. Kyoutani barely hears him over his brain shouting that he's touching Kyoutani's underwear, and that his hair looks cute all fluffed up by the wind. Like a baby duck. "--you're not even listening to me," the priest sighs. "Fine. Okay. Prove to me that you at least have an emergency kit and I'll give you your stuff back." 

"Wait, what the fuck," Kyoutani tunes back in. "You want to come to my apartment?" 

"I hate doing funerals," the priest says, glaring at Kyoutani. "They're a pain."

It's difficult to argue with that, so Kyoutani takes the priest upstairs, and, like he's had daydreams about this scenario before, but usually he's got on his biking leathers or something cooler than a stretched out Yokai Watch t-shirt and the too-small track pants he stole from the lost and found, and the priest isn't inspecting the empty cartons of 7-11 brand sake by the door with extreme judgement. It's excruciating. Kyoutani doesn't really own any chairs, so the priest just sort of stands in the living room trying to avoid staring at Kyoutanis nest of an unmade futon. 

"It's very cozy," he says, shuffling awkwardly from foot to foot. Kyoutani snorts. He has some nerve; he invited himself to Kyoutani's apartment, he doesn't get to be the awkward one in this situation. "Do you want me to," the priest flaps a hand at the laundry pole, "while you look for your stuff." Kyoutani waves him on. He needs the priest out of his space. He needs to remember how to breathe, because watching the priest putter around, picking up stray socks and cooing at the ugly spider plant that Kyoutani's been trying to kill for months is doing something terrible to his heart. He doesn't know which is worse: that the priest is here, or that in about five minutes when Kyoutani shows him the anemic survival kit stashed under the sink he's going to walk out Kyoutani's front door and never come back.

He lets the priest run wild on his balcony and tries to shove as much of his shit into the closet as possible to make the room look like something a respectable, priest-like person might enjoy spending time in, at some nebulous point in the future. He's poking at the aircon, which seems to be broken again when a hand taps him on the shoulder and he nearly flies out of his skin. 

"Don't DO that," Kyoutani says, and the priest has the audacity to look gently amused. 

"I tried calling you, but I realized I don't actually know your name." 

"Kyoutani," he says, because if the priest ever calls him Kentaro, Kyoutani's heart will actually stop beating and Irihita will drag him out of the afterlife to kill him again for dying of something so stupid. "Yahaba Shigeru," the priest says. Kyoutani is too tired for this. His vision is fuzzing at the corners. "...bless you?" 

"It's my name, dumbass," Yahaba swears, which, great now Kyoutani's ruined a priest. "Are you sure you're okay? You look kind of woozy." 

"I've worked almost twelve straight hours," Kyoutani says, really wishing he could sit down now. Why the fuck doesn't he own a chair? "I fought a snake. I'm fucking exhausted." He realizes, as he's speaking, that Yahaba's hours are eternal, and actually feels the blood rush to his face in embarrassment.

"You what a what?" Yahaba's moved in closer, Kyoutani's not sure when that happened. He's got the back of his hand pressed to Kyoutani's forehead, and Kyoutani would protest at being treated like a child, except it's....nice. To have Yahaba fussing over him, instead of at him. 

"You heard me," he says. Yahaba rolls his eyes.

"Lie down." Kyoutani must make a truly incredible face, because Yahaba blushes all the way from the tips of his ears to his throat. It's adorable, Kyoutani hates it, and hates that he continues with, "I'm about 90% sure you have a fever." 

The words tumble out in a rush, and before Kyoutani knows what's happened, his futon is remade, he's handed a towel and an icepack, and tucked under the duvet. "Lie down, and I'll be right back, I promise." Yahaba says, taking Kyoutani's hand in his and laying the icepack on Kyoutani's forehead. And then Kyoutani blinks, and Yahaba is gone.

+++

Twenty minutes later, once Kyoutani's decided that Yahaba well and truly isn't coming back, and kicked off the track pants in a fit of pique, his door is kicked in by a terrifying, dripping specter carrying the entire contents of a Family Mart.

"Sorry, the checkout line was a mess," Yahaba says, dropping his bags in the entryway. "Everyone was stocking up for the storm. The instant noodle aisle alone was..." His eyes speak of untold horrors. There is no instant ramen in the bag, though. 

"Ah, fruit," Kyoutani says wistfully from the floor, "how nostalgic." When was the last time he ate an actual fruit that wasn't submerged in some sort of gelatin? It probably says something terrible about his life that Kyoutani can't remember. 

"I didn't know if you owned a fruit knife, so I bought one of those too," Yahaba blinks down at him, stopped mid-sentence, and it's only then that Kyoutani remembers that he's not wearing pants."I...I, um." The blush is back. Yahaba, obviously flustered, tries to distract Kyoutani by shoving a thermometer into his armpit, like Kyoutani's bleary, single-minded focus isn't on the way his eyes keep flicking to Kyoutani's bare thighs, then frantically away.  

He's probably looking for signs of scurvy, Kyoutani tells himself, wiggling back under the duvet to sulk properly. He tries snapping the tiny thread of hope unspooling in his chest, to no avail. Yahaba notices him noticing, and peels three entire apples before he can bring himself to look Kyoutani in the eyes again. As signs go, Kyoutani doesn't think that's promising. 

"You didn't have to do this," Kyoutani says, as Yahaba starts in on apple number four. 

"I really did," Yahaba mutters. Which, okay. The thermometer chooses this moment to scream at Kyoutani. "Thirty-seven point seven degrees,” Yahaba squints down. A brief fantasy of Yahaba in glasses dances through Kyoutani's head. “Congratulations, you have a mild fever." 

As if on cue, a massive roll of thunder rumbles outside. The lights flicker, and go out. Kyoutani, Yahaba, and four bags of fruit sit together in silence for a moment, listening to the pounding of rain against the roof. 

"I think...I'd better stay," Yahaba says, managing to frame it like a question, like Kyoutani could tell him to hit the road and head back out into a typhoon and he'd do it. 

"Yeah." He sighs. "Yeah I guess you'd better."


End file.
